Amazon Cloud Player

More Amazon Cloud Player news today and this time it's good news for Brits, as the Mac and Windows client is now available to download from Amazon UK. The app itself has been around for Mac users for a few weeks, but having downloaded from Amazon U.S. I found the app completely unusable, but with this British version, all is well.

We've been hearing about the apparent disappearance of the Amazon Cloud Player app for iOS from the App Store earlier today, and while that seemed to be the case it's now back with update in tow. We're not looking at anything major, but its disappearance may have indicated some bugs to be fixed.

Amazon's Cloud Player has been around for a while now, but the only way to access it in a desktop environment has been via the web browser. Now though, Amazon has announced a full desktop client for Cloud Player, and takes the fight to iTunes in doing so.

Amazon has announced the launch of AutoRip, a service that gives customers free MP3 versions of albums that they have previously purchased through Amazon as CDs. This includes albums from the beginning of the Amazon music store back in 1998. While not all albums are eligible, Amazon says that more than 50,000 albums are ready for AutoRip.

Yesterday, one of our readers, Aaron wrote in to tell us Amazon Cloud Player was suddenly playing -- if not nicely, than with less hostility -- on his iPad. Since it's US only, I couldn't check it myself but I asked him what was different from the previous, play-one-song-at-a-time-via-QuickTime "support"

He said it was; it played in his browser, didn't launch QuickTime, his music controls worked, and it would continue to play in the background. He was also kind enough to make us the video, embedded below.

Why less-hostile rather than nicely? You still have to ignore the warning about it not being compatible and push on through. Hopefully this means Amazon is working on it, however, and it will eventually, if not soon, be a seamless experience for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

If you're using Cloud Player on iOS, let us know what you think of the experience now. Good, good enough, still needs to get better?